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General DiscussionFeel like chilling and talking about random stuff? General Discussion is the place for you!

So on this website we have hackers that have origins stemming about a decade back. The hacking scene has constantly evolved (except the past few years have been rather slow) and everyone has different origins. So, tell the community, how did you begin hacking? What was the first hack you played? etc.

Personally, I had just gotten my first Pokemon game and wanted to make my own. I started looking around at game maker programs and ended up through tons of browsing at a video of Pokémon Chaos Black by @mewthree9000 and then I started playing Pokémon Naranja by Serg!o as it was the next video and looked interesting. Eventually I ended up meeting @Linkandzelda and became involved with the whole alternative Pokéhacking forum scene at TPW and TPB (Today Petalburg Woods, an RP forum and PHO, this forum ^_^), which in turn led me to meet Mewthree9000 and join Mewthree Inc. with him.

Well like most people I found SG on PC. I was searching for ways to "enhance graphics of GBA games" because I wanted to play Crystal in GBA style after I played FR. And somehow that lead me to PC and I discovered hacking.

Let's see. Back in the early 2000s, (so before Fire Red was even out), I was looking for Pokémon graphics for RPGMaker 2000 to try and make a fan game. Somewhere in that, I found out out about roms. I was on some rom downloading site and I noticed that in addition to the usual Red, Blue, and Yellow I was seeing things like "Pokémon Brown" and "Pokémon Orange Islands" and "Pokémon Generations" and I thought "Well that's weird, I wonder what those are?" so I downloaded them. Then I started looking around for tools to make my own and found Poketext and Pokemap and stuff.

Then later I moved on to Gen II once we had found out more about that (I remember when it was so cool that someone had finally figured out how to change the sprites). Then somewhere in the mid 2000s me and another hacker named Pyro started working on a hack called "Pokémon Secrets and Rumours" and we decided to make up a team name instead of just saying it was by "Mateo and Pyro" and somehow we came up with the name "Skeetendo Inc". Eventually that turned into a community instead of just a hacking team, and now I don't even go there anymore xD. Also, somewhere in that, I was also involved with Mewthree Inc although I didn't even know that was still going on. Man, the hacking scene sure has changed a lot since then.

Edit: Yes, if you are wondering, Skeetendo is absolutely a combination of "Skeet" and "Nintendo". Why we thought that was a good idea, I'll never know. But I think it was originally suggested as a joke while one of us was listening to "Get Low" by Lil Jon.

Let's see. Back in the early 2000s, (so before Fire Red was even out), I was looking for Pokémon graphics for RPGMaker 2000 to try and make a fan game. Somewhere in that, I found out out about roms. I was on some rom downloading site and I noticed that in addition to the usual Red, Blue, and Yellow I was seeing things like "Pokémon Brown" and "Pokémon Orange Islands" and "Pokémon Generations" and I thought "Well that's weird, I wonder what those are?" so I downloaded them. Then I started looking around for tools to make my own and found Poketext and Pokemap and stuff.

Then later I moved on to Gen II once we had found out more about that (I remember when it was so cool that someone had finally figured out how to change the sprites). Then somewhere in the mid 2000s me and another hacker named Pyro started working on a hack called "Pokémon Secrets and Rumours" and we decided to make up a team name instead of just saying it was by "Mateo and Pyro" and somehow we came up with the name "Skeetendo Inc". Eventually that turned into a community instead of just a hacking team, and now I don't even go there anymore xD. Also, somewhere in that, I was also involved with Mewthree Inc although I didn't even know that was still going on. Man, the hacking scene sure has changed a lot since then.

Edit: Yes, if you are wondering, Skeetendo is absolutely a combination of "Skeet" and "Nintendo". Why we thought that was a good idea, I'll never know. But I think it was originally suggested as a joke while one of us was listening to "Get Low" by Lil Jon.

Wow, you're old in the community! Nice story

Haha well M3I just restarted like last week once M3 rounded up a few of the old members.

Omg the name I never thought about the origin of the name Skeetendo, just kinda went with it. "Get Low" though

I was very upset that I couldn't skip the entire story from Leaf Green and just go straight to the Elite Four until I won. So I started looking up how to make my own games, and I eventually found Advance Map, figured that out ( Youtubezz ) and then I realized what I was doing was considered "ROM Hacking" then I went to Pokecommunity as an angry 11 year old wanna be hard core. Then I matured a bit, came here, then tumblr happened. Along the way I have developed a greater interest in programming than hacking.

If playing around with tools qualifies as hacking, I'm one of the guys who also started young. I think I could have been 10 or 11 when I actually made my first hack. I can't say I remember for sure but I'd say, my first hack is an enemy stats modification of Chrono Trigger done in 2001-2002.

Since then, I used to do all kinds of simple game edits over time, whenever I felt like it really (and there weren't really that many over the years). One day, I started playing around with a map editor for pokemon crystal and actually managed to make my very "own" game with it, Crystal Redesign (which turned out pretty horrible to say the least). That was in 2008.

I enjoyed that kind of map- and trainer editing business, so I came up with many other small modifications as well. I guess the only things I learned at the time was the knowledge that all this information I'm editing is stored inside the rom and I can change it with this tool, and perhaps a little bit more. Oh yeah - I did make a simple evolution hex edit with one of these "hacks".

In late 2010, I started investigating more and "made" CrystalText. Actually, the only thing I did was to modify the contents of certain ini-files that told the actual editor, PokeText, where to load text data, of certain data format, from.
Since then, I started tapping more into the scene and I guess the next big step happened sometime in late 2011. After that, I slowly became content with all kinds of data and playing around with a hex editor, and other kinds of tools available. And learned how to program while at it as well.

By the way.. once I had become better than all the average people in PC, yeah I've been hanging around in there, I started to become selfish, and "elitist". Once I had learned more and more, I also got rid of this attitude, but a question to others, have you seen this happening during your own hacking / general life as well ?

By the way.. once I had become better than all the average people in PC, yeah I've been hanging around in there, I started to become selfish, and "elitist". Once I had learned more and more, I also got rid of this attitude, but a question to others, have you seen this happening during your own hacking / general life as well ?

If I have, it's because my people-skills are not up to par. But never on purpose. I really do think everyone should be treated like they know stuff or have the potential to know stuff.

I found Chaos Black on Cydia about a year and a half ago and I started playing it. That was when I realized that the games could be modded, so I started looking into it. My first task, was to change the sprite in BW to Brenden from Ruby (don't hate, that was just the game I grew up with as a kid.:P) I quickly found gen III hacking to be much more appealing because I could run it on my iPod, so I switched to that and joined PC so I could ask questions.

Soon enough, I became one of the only ones answering questions and I learned really fast by solving other peoples problems. After struggling through HackMew's ASM tutorial a few times trying to understand it, it finally clicked when I ported Darthatron's item script runner to Ruby. This was the first time I actually felt like a part of a community because I had to talk to @Darthatron on IRC in order to understand some of the pointers in his code. The first time I logged in, I saw @Shiny Quagsire, @Jambo51, @Linkandzelda, and @Darthatron all in the same room. I had always seen posts by them, but it was weird to actually talk to them. ( and also super awkward at first, as they were like hacking gods, per se, haha)

Anyways, after that first IRC conversation (in which I logged in and out about 30 times trying to figure out how to work the thing, lol), I kept learning and I'm still here.:P

When I was 9, I was searching for random videos in YouTube and found ROM hacking video.
I'm interested so I downloaded dem hack tools and play around with them.
The first thing I do is replacing houses in Littleroot Town to caves.
I was a big nub that time, didn't even know how to edit the movement permissions. xD
I quit ROM hacking because I find something better, online games.

And the in 2012, my brother's computer's broken, I've nothing to do.
I find that my grandfather's computer's unused, so I asked my grandfather for using it.
He gave me that computer, I tried to download an online game and tried to play it, but that computer's slower than the slowest. xD
I deleted that online game, tried to watch videos but that ancient computer still can't handle it.
And I found ROM hacking video again, I'm interested again and got into it.
Everything has been changed, Advance Map is more better than before.
I searched about ROM hacking in Google and found PC, I joined and learned more about ROM hacking.
I asked some hackers for scripting help, I found tajaros and later I realized that I asked the wrong person jk he's good, he became my friend after that.

In 2013 my skill's improved a lot, unlike before.
I can do more than replacing houses with caves.
tajaros referred me to the forums named The Pokémon District.
I scrolled down to the bottom and I found PHO, I decided to join.
And then, I left PHO silently.
After some days, I decided to be back to PHO, I don't even know it was shut down.
So I joined RHM (it was RHO) instead.
And PHO is back up again, I've been here since.